Voice communication for gaming and other electronic activities is becoming increasingly popular, particularly for individuals connected over the Internet or other network. For those participating in multiplayer games, voice communication greatly expands the depth of enjoyment and social interaction between players of a game. However, multiplayer games often involve players who are unknown to each other. In addition, the sound of a player's voice can readily be altered so that it is not recognizable. For example, many players from all over the world may connect over the Internet to a server-based gaming service, and anonymously communicate with each other while participating in a game session together.
There are a number of systems that enable players to establish voice communications between each other, independent of a game session. Players can use telephone conferencing systems that use caller identification (caller-ID) data to identify participants. However, caller-ID data reveals information that anonymous players might not wish to divulge. Other examples include Microsoft Corporation's SIDEWIDER GAME VOICE™ and GameSpy Industries, Inc.'s ROGER WELCO™ systems. These systems require players to exchange communication address information and make direct connections. However, exchanging address information and making direct connections are often not convenient or desirable. Setting up independent voice communication takes time, and interrupts game play. Those players who have a static communication address may not wish to divulge this information to other players for fear of a possible misuse of the communication address. Alternatively, a player may find that after establishing communication, another player uses vulgar or threatening language. In that case, the player, or a game hosting service, may wish to mute or otherwise discontinue communication by the other player. Further, these independent voice communication systems do not enable the voice communication to be related to the game activity. For example, it may be desirable to prohibit voice communication between certain players if animated characters that represent those players are not within sufficient distance of each other in the game's virtual environment.
Some multiplayer network games incorporate a text chat system for players to communicate. For example, Id Software, Inc.'s QUAKE III™ enables players in a game session to type text messages to each other. This text chat system is similar to conventional stand-alone text chat systems, wherein a user types a message into a text entry box and sends the message by pressing the Enter key. The message appears as text on each receiver's display screen. The author of the text message is indicated on the display, since the author's identifier precedes the text message sent by the author. However, the text message and author identifier are not displayed on a receiver's display screen until after the author finishes typing the message and presses the Enter key. If the author's animated character is visible to other players in the game session, the author's animated character might be destroyed by an opposing player who did not know that the author was busy typing a text message, and could not concurrently move the author's animated character out of harm's way. To alleviate this problem, QUAKE III™ may display a chat bubble over the author's animated character when the author begins to type a text message. The chat bubble appears only if the author's animated character is displayed on a receiver's display screen. If the author's animated character is not visible on a receiver's display screen, a chat bubble is not displayed, and there is no other indication that the author is typing a text message. Instead, the text message appears on the receiver's display screen only after the author presses the Enter key. The QUAKE III™ game is also similar to conventional chat sessions in its display of text messages in sequential order.
As a further enhancement, a player can bind a text message to a key, so that the user can simply press the key to send a predefined text message. In this case, there is no need to display a chat bubble, because the text message quickly appears on each receiver's display screen. However, if most players only use predefined text messages, a chat bubble may never appear over the senders' animated characters. In that case, other players may find it difficult or impossible to determine which animated character corresponds to a particular predefined text message. For those players who physically type text messages causing a chat bubble to be displayed, the authoring player must interrupt their game play to input the text message. If multiple players start inputting text messages, the game play may effectively stop, because the remaining player(s) may not wish to unfairly or inadvertently harm an animated character that is vulnerable while the corresponding player(s) are inputting a text message.
Thus, it is preferable to use immediate voice communication to reduce interruptions to the game session. It is also preferable to visually identify anonymous speakers, so that each player can better control and react to voice communication with other players. Further, voice communication can be mixed, so that multiple speakers can be heard at the same time. Accordingly, it is desirable to visually identify those players that are speaking. In addition, it is desirable that the voice communications be affected by the environment in the game session, such as by varying the volume of a speaker based on a distance between the animated characters of the speaker and the listener. The concept is clearly also applicable to other virtual environment applications in which voice communication by entities in the environment occurs.